ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. For our testing, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw data rather than random or mixed which, although more realistic, result with lower performance results.

Listed specifications of 550MB/s read and 510MB/s write are bang on the money to our ATTO result of 546MB/s read and 513MB/s write.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of raw (0/1 Fill) or random data. Many new SSD owners who cant wait to test the performance of their SSD often grab this program and run a quick test, not realizing that they are testing with random data, not RAW or 0Fill data as tested by manufacturers. The 0Fill result is on the left and random data result on the right.

The result on the right is giving a great indication of how testing of this ‘SandForce Driven’ SSD results in testing incompressible data. SandForce is not a fan of testing with Crystal Diskmark with random data sampling or that of AS SSD as the results portray an unrealistic view of how the drive will perform compared to others in reality. We tend to agree with such which is why we leave our comparison testing to PCMark Vantage. Fair is fair though and lets take a look at AS SSD…

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.64

AS SSD Disk Benchmark is perhaps the only benchmark program that was created for solid state drives.

In examining ATTO, Crystal and AS SSD Benchmarks, there seems to be two pictures portrayed, each of which ‘appears’ to be on either side of the performance spectrum. Lets leave any judgement until we get to PCMark Vantage testing and once again remember that those new SSDs using asynchronous NAND flash memory, such as the Corsair Force Series 3 we are reviewing here, are doing so to bring the SSD into the hands of value conscious consumers.